1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally concerns on-line learning. More specifically, the present invention concerning on-line learning while allowing for interaction and collaboration amongst participants including students and teachers.
2. Description of the Related Art
On-line and distance learning are becoming increasingly common, especially with increased network bandwidth and the quality of on-line video and audio presentation.
While educators are now able to present high quality content to interested parties without technical distractions related to network interruptions or poor video and sound quality, these presentations are, by and large, static lectures. While these lectures might be informative, they are not engaging, which leads to a lack of attention from an audience, captive or otherwise.
FIG. 1 illustrates a one teacher-to-many students teaching environment as it exists in the prior art. The traditional one teacher-to-many students educational or presentation paradigm shown in FIG. 1 presents a number of obstacles. Students, for example, may feel isolated. There is also a single learning resource (i.e., the teacher) that is forced to divide a finite amount of time and attention to many students. Educational time is also limited with respect to the typical classroom period. For example, certain students (e.g., better performing students or ‘class clowns’), may dominate a discussion, which presents a less effective learning environment for other participants. This leads to a poor sense of community and inhibits contribution from the entirety of the classroom.
Further, while there are currently services that serve as repositories of teaching curriculum assembled online from contributing educators, these repositories, and the educators utilizing them, are limited by the fact that each contributing educator submits their own lesson plans or curriculum in a form that differs from other contributors. For example, the approach to the lesson plan and the resources and time needed to execute the plan are inherently different for each individual contribution from an educator. As a result, any educator who wants to draw from the repository must review a multitude of different approaches requiring a multitude of different resources and time to implement.
There is a need in the art for on-line and distance learning while allowing for collaboration amongst participants including students and teachers. There is a further need for a library of content that fosters collaboration and participation with indicia of that content most likely to generate active engagement between participants, as well as for a standardized platform that allows interchangeability between “topic-based lessons” so that the lessons can be easily created and shared.